Visited Las Vegas this past weekend and met with the legendary Bob Arum as well as Top Rank President Todd Duboef at their office on Pilot Road.
Todd took the time to show me around the huge building which houses nearly 50 full-time employees, including 15 people just for social networks which has more than 25 million subscribers. This number exceeds all of its three main competitors which are PBC, Matchroom and Golden Boy.
To this group of permanent employees, we must add the freelancers retained during events for TV broadcasting and all logistics.
Daycare areas are dedicated to workers’ children, with supervision, which adds to their many advantages of working with the most prolific professional boxing promotion organization in the world.
Most impressive about the tour is the sealed vault, impervious to weather, flooding and fire which is set at a constant temperature to preserve the company’s immense catalog of films and videos.
Everything has already been digitized, but we retain all the originals of the 1774 boxing galas organized by Bob Arum since the founding of the company in 1971, when Muhammad Ali won a 12-round decision over Buster Mathis.
Arum’s first involvement in professional boxing began at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Garden on March 29, 1966, when the great Muhammad Ali defeated Canadian George Chuvalo by decision, in 15 rounds, to defend his WBC title for the third time.
From 1966 to 1971, the company that supported Ali was “Main Bout” of which Arum was one of the owners and the one who directed its operations. Eleven legendary fights were organized under his aegis. Main Bout is in a way the ancestor of Top Rank.
The company’s large video library, which contains 26 Ali fights, also includes big stars like Sugar Ray Leonard, Larry Holmes, Oscar De La Hoya, Joe Frazier, Floyd Mayweather, Thomas Hearns, Ray Mancini, Marvin Hagler, George Foreman and many others.
ESPN CLASSIC presents a weekly broadcast of fights drawn from this vault which is an inexhaustible source of great clashes. How much is this catalog worth? We are talking about several hundred million.
Top Rank has an exclusive contractual agreement with ESPN and ESPN+ for the presentation of live boxing galas. The demand is greater than the production capacity of the organization, which is why Top Rank subcontracts with other promoters for the supply of content.
This agreement began in July 2017 and ends at the end of 2025.
Currently more than 60 boxers have a contractual pact with the American firm, the most important of which are Tyson Fury, Artur Beterbiev, Naoya Inoue and Mikaela Mayer.
If Bob Arum was the dynamo who launched Top Rank and established it among the greatest boxing promotion firms in history, it was truly Todd Duboef who made it take the digital turn and who realized, more than 10 years ago, that the future of promotion lay through social networks and that it was necessary to invest massively there.
Duboef is not the type to care for his ego by placing himself between the boxers who pose face to face, he is rather self-effacing but behind the scenes, he runs the biggest empire in professional boxing.
He gives credit to Bob Arum for allowing him to lead the company according to his vision and thus outrun all the competition. Arum has always known how to surround himself with the best boxing experts to find the right boxers and develop them. This is how no less than 6 members of the company’s staff were inducted into the International Professional Boxing Hall: Bob Arum himself, Teddy Brenner, Bruce Trampler, Lee Samuel, Brad Goodman and Brad Jacobs.
They will eventually be joined by another important member of the organization, Vice President Carl Moretti. No wonder the company has always known how to make the right decisions.
By comparison, Don King Productions was Top Rank’s great rival in the 1980s and 1990s, but Don King, also 93, was a “one man show” and the company died out as sales dwindled. its energies.
Arum may be 93 in December, but he’s bright, insightful, opinionated and on top of everything. He doesn’t hesitate to say what he thinks, even if it’s disturbing.
He doesn’t believe a rematch between Beterbiev and Bivol is feasible before next fall because it takes Saudi Arabia’s financial resources to satisfy the demands. He also does not believe that “Riyadh’s Seasons” will operate again outside the Middle East like in California or London this year.
He knows that the IBF has just ordered the fight of mandatory challenger Michael Eifert (13-1, 5 KOs) for the unified champion, but considers it a stupid fight that achieves nothing. He would much prefer to pit the adopted Quebecer against Canelo Alvarez or David Benavidez.
He doesn’t know how keen Artur is to keep all the belts including the IBF. He intends to ask her and if so, he will respect her choice and act accordingly.
The nonagenarian is very busy. He trains every morning for 90 minutes under supervision. He is convinced that this is what allows him to still be so active.
Three days a week he is at his office in Las Vegas and four days in Beverley Hill. When he is in California, he is very involved socially in outings organized by his wife three times a week.
He is very politically engaged and actively participates in Kamala Harris’ campaign. He knows Donald Trump very well, whom he calls a crook. He organized, along with Main Event, the fight between Evander Holyfield and George Foreman at the Trump Tal Mahal in Atlantic City on April 18, 1991.
To get the fight, Trump had offered 11.5M, 500K more than the Caesars. However, two weeks before the event the future American president canceled the deal and told the promoters that if they were not happy, they should just sue him.
Not wanting to cancel, the promoters agreed to renegotiate. Trump offered them the sum of 1 million in addition to box office receipts which eventually amounted to 8 million.
Bob Arum never digested it: “So, to this day, I’m angry at Donald Trump because he cheated us, and this is the only way to put it, he cheated Dan (Main Event) and myself for $2.5 million.”
He spoke to me, with a beautiful sparkle in his eyes, about his recent journey which first led him to Tokyo in Japan on May 6, to witness Monster Naoya Inoue’s 6th round TKO victory over Luis Nery.
Then at Perth in Australia for the Lomachenko fight against George Kambosos on May 12, which saw the Ukrainian become world champion again.
On May 18, he was at Riyadh in Saudi Arabia to see his protégé, Tyson Fury, suffer a split decision defeat against Oleksandr Usyk.
Finally on May 25, he was at Leeds in England to encourage Josh Taylor who was surprised by Jack Catterall by unanimous decision.
He must have come back completely exhausted? Not at all, it’s just a matter of knowing how to travel well, he replied.
He has no plans to retire. He is still as passionate as ever and he ensures that he does not miss a single fight of all his boxers, from beginners to champions, whether on site or on television.
Indeed, if you attend a Top Rank gala, you will notice that from the start of the first fight Arum is in his seat on the floor, practically empty, but he is there to watch his protégés evolve.
He says he loves Quebec, the cities of Quebec and Montreal and wishes to have the opportunity to return soon.
Some boxing news
• The WBO is holding its annual convention in Puerto Rico this week. The organization will join the IBF and WBA and once again allow championship fights on the territory of Russia. We remember that since the Russian invasion in Ukraine, all organizations refused to sanction fighting in Micha’s country.
• 50 years ago, on October 30, 1974 in Kinshasa, Zaire, Muhammad Ali caused one of the biggest surprises in the history of boxing by being knocked out. in the 8th round to George Foreman to once again become WBC and WBA world champion. If you haven’t done so, I suggest you watch the brilliant documentary “When We Were Kings” which recounts all the events surrounding this historic event. I assure you that you will love it.
• The incredible Naoya Inoue (28-0, 25 KOs) will return to the ring to defend his total super bantamweight supremacy against one of his mandatory contenders, the Australian Sam Goodman (19-0, 8 K.-O.) in Tokyo on December 24. This will be the fourth fight in a year for “Monster” which is exceptional at this level.
• Quebec heavyweight Alexis Barrière (11-0, 9 KOs) leaves this evening – Friday November 1 – for the Republic of Malta where Tyson Fury’s training camp is being held, preparing for his revenge fight against Oleksandr Usyk, December 21 in Riyadh. Alexis is the former WBC champion’s main training partner. This will be his third camp with him.
• RIP Daniel Michel
Happy boxing and see you next week!
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